Le journal de local #2 – Alex Little and Karsten Jurkchat’s Cannes Series

Alex Little and Karsten Jurkchat, senior creative team at Ogilvy Melbourne are in Cannes competing in the Cyber category of the Cannes Young Lions competition. Here, the pair shines a light on the Cannes celebrities you haven’t heard of, exclusively for CB.

“I am from Champagne, but I met my husband in the Hotel de Paris in Monaco. I was an air hostess and he was a very good chef at the hotel. One day I got a call from my best friend in Cannes and she said she had to sell her restaurant quickly or the bank would take her house. I said okay we can help. If you give us the key, Romain and I will come and make a new story in Cannes. This was 21 years ago. In the beginning it was very hard. We lived for two years with my parents and still now there is never a Sunday, never a holiday. It’s non-stop. I want to take the boat out with my father, but it’s not possible. It’s a good job though. In four years, I stop. I will be 60. I go on my boat.” – Fabienne Lamblin, Gavroche Restaurant, Old Town, Cannes

After chatting with the incredibly gracious, Fabienne, we headed on down to our Young Lions briefing at the festival hub. Although we knew 48 countries compete in the comp every year, it didn’t prepare us for the weirdness of being surrounded by such a carefully selected spectrum of nationalities, like a Noah’s Ark of creative teams. And it would have been interesting to chat to them, especially the likes of Belarus and Georgia, but we were competing against them and therefore wished them the worst. Even you Canada.

We received our brief for the Bono backed charity (RED), and retreated back to our hotel for a night of average ideas. Luckily, a sleep did us good and we woke up with an idea we liked and could quickly mock up in time for us to run to the Palais for the announcement of data and mobile Lions, which we had a couple of entries in. Incredibly, our AAMI SmartPlates idea picked up a Gold Lion for Ogilvy, plus a handful of other semi-precious metals. A hell of a 24 hours and something that’s still sinking in. First Cannes experience ain’t half bad at all.